Backspace
by badge-and-pen
Summary: Sometimes, all we want to do is erase the past. But we can't. We have to live, and adjust, and learn. And sometimes, we can't handle that. Major character death. One-shot.


**A/N: This is my first foray into fiction outside of the Bones fandom, where I've been happily writing for the past two years. Castle has always amazed me, though, and I've loved every minute of every episode. That being said, I've had a terrible time trying to introduce myself to the fandom. It's hard to seperate from Bones' characters in order to get a grip on those from Castle. **

**So, I've done what I did the first time I tried Bones fiction. I've killed off a character. For some reason, I find that it helps me to get into all of the characters' heads, because it's one of those emotional, powerful things that we'll never see on the show. At least... I certainly hope we'll never see it.**

**So, without further ado... my first Castle fic. I hope that you will enjoy. **

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><p><em>Backspace<em>

The rain was a low throb against the window panes, and the wash of liquid made the outside world seem blurry and forbidding; a place to be avoided. The apartment itself, sheltered from the storm, was darker than it should have been. The only light was that which drifted its way down from the gaps in the clouds and slithered through the lines in the glass. It fell in ribbons across the floor, stretched and abnormal, reaching to the bottom lip of the couch but no further.

The laptop screen was the harsh fake light that normally hurt his eyes, but it had been in front of him for the past few hours; long enough that he had adjusted enough to be unbothered by it. Probably why he hadn't turned on any of the lamps, Alexis thought from her perch against the railing of the stairs.

She was high enough up that her father couldn't see her unless he was actually looking, but it was the darkness that hid her, shrouding her in its cloak and allowing her to observe in merciful silence.

There hadn't been much talk, though. Not these past few days, not these past few weeks.

It was almost strange, that she hadn't thought about the possibility. She read so many of her father's books, sometimes without his knowledge or express permission... and she was an avid student beyond that. She knew enough to know that... there wasn't always a happy ending.

But this wasn't one of his books. This was the reality that he pulled those tales from, and it wasn't as picture-perfect or planned out as he made it seem, when he so easily poured the words into those keys, day after day.

It wasn't like she was naïve, either, though. She knew a great deal about how cruel the real world was. She knew what happened to people; good people, innocent people, who had never done anything deserving of their fates. A part of that was why she always pitied her father's characters. And not just the ones whose murders were the center of attention.

No, she pitied the ones whose lives crossed death day in and day out. Because with knowing her father, she knew the meaning behind the words. She saw the darkness he brought home with him, from a case. Even through his humor and his jokes and his childlike actions... there was a seriousness in his expression when he typed, or when he was lost in thought, before he realized she had entered the room.

He put on a front for her, and it wasn't fake. It was just... a _front_. Another side of himself, that tried to protect her by staying lighthearted. There was more, though. There was always more.

Maybe that was why it had shocked her so much, when the news had come crashing down on their family. The lighthearted side was easier to deal with; it blocked out the fear that she always had digging at her when the phone rang and he bantered with Beckett on the other line before waving a farewell and taking off to a crime scene.

Or maybe it was that she had always been afraid for him, specifically. Guilt washed over her, for the briefest of moments, and then she pushed it away. There was already enough of that in their home; she didn't need to add to it. She was already busy enough trying to combat the waves of it that rushed off of him.

Whatever it was, though... she had honestly never thought that the one of them that wouldn't make it out okay would be Beckett.

Her father was larger than life; he was the man off the pages, and he wrote Nikki Heat the same way. She was confidence in every sense of the word. She was the tough, sexy, no nonsense type of cop that she had expected him to write about... and at the same time, there was a depth that she hadn't seen from his characters before. It might have had something to do with how he usually chose male leads, or how there was always little dimension to their female counterparts beyond the occasionally useful line... but there had been something different, this time around.

Alexis wasn't an idiot, and it certainly hadn't escaped her attention that he had named the reporter after himself. Part of it had been strange, seeing her father actually enamored with someone who she didn't have to pretend not to see sneaking out of the apartment before breakfast. And part of it... most of it... had been really very nice. He was so... animated, when he talked about her. Most of it was about the cases they worked, but through each conversation there was also something insistent about the way he emphasized what Beckett had said, or how Beckett had done something...

A part of her, too, had been of the belief that something more was going to come of it, eventually. Never, before he had started working with Beckett, had Alexis found herself interested in his romances. She usually rolled her eyes at his antics, and tried to keep him in line. She usually put up with his girlfriends and his ex-wife that was not her mother with as much patience as she could. What she didn't usually do was find herself wondering what it would be like if someone he was with ever became her step-mother.

Never, until Beckett.

Unlike her father, she knew who both her parents were. There was none of that mystery that he described, and none of that idealizing and dreaming. Instead, she knew exactly what she had, and what she didn't. And what she had always wanted, no matter how much she did love her mother... was a mother figure who was _actually _a mother figure. Someone that she could talk about boys with, who could help her pick out her prom dress, who could go shopping with her _without_ pretending a relative had died to get her out of school.

It was never about her not loving her mother. Because she did; a great deal. And Gram was always there, as well. In a way, she had been more a mother than Alexis' real mother, anyways.

But when Beckett had become part of their lives, it had opened a few doors that she hadn't even known existed before then. Calling to ask for a meeting, just to discuss school stuff and whether or not she should go on a foreign exchange trip, had seemed almost completely normal. There had been something about Beckett that had made it so easy to talk to her. She offered good advice, and she listened attentively to everything, rather than just nodding through the middle when she got bored, like a good portion of Alexis' friends seemed to do more and more.

It was still hard to comprehend; the fact that she wouldn't see her again.

Dad didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to talk about anything.

The day he had come home with the news... it had been late. She had been sitting on the couch, huddled with Gram, watching the door and listening to the ticking of the clock as it grated at both of their nerves.

They both knew something had gone terribly wrong. He had called, to say he was alright... and that was it. Just that he was alright. And that was when she had turned on the TV. Gram had tried to talk her out of it, but she had been resolute. There was a reason he was calling, to let them know. He was making sure they wouldn't worry, and he knew that there was a reason they should be worried.

So she had watched.

The lights from the police cars on the screen had flashed through the dark living room, almost unnaturally. And she had sat there, her legs tucked up to her chest with her chin resting on her knee, Gram's arm around her shoulder as they both stared, wide-eyed, at the information scrolling across the news bar.

_NYPD Detective shot and killed in the line of duty at scene of earlier murder._

They hadn't known who it was, but they had known enough to be terrified. The door had shut behind him with such strong finality, she hadn't been able to breathe.

_"Richard,"_ Gram had said, the word itself a question.

_"She's dead,"_ he had answered, his voice raw and empty.

It wasn't a sound that could be forgotten.

For two weeks, he hadn't touched the laptop. It had felt like he couldn't bring himself to go near it. And the only thing he had said, the only time he had acknowledged what had happened beyond those confirming words when he'd come in that door... had been when he had murmured in the kitchen one afternoon, almost to himself—_"She always thought she'd take a bullet..."_

Alexis still remembered flinching at the words.

Tonight was the first time he had sat with it, and she had known it would happen eventually. But it was still different, and it still concerned her.

The thing about her father, was that he loved his characters as individuals, as friends, almost. He came back to them, and he followed them down their roads. Only she was aware of the tears she had found trailing down his face the night he had killed off Derek Storm.

They were like family to him.

And none of them had ever died on him before, without his decision playing a role.

Nikki Heat wasn't the same as Derek Storm. Nikki Heat... wasn't a character he'd have gotten tired of. She wasn't a character he'd have ended. No, she was a character with a happy ending in her future, somewhere down the line. His readers might have thought he was losing his touch if he had settled her down with a family to close off the series... but she had seen it has a possibility.

He had changed, these past few years. And so had his characters.

But even with the computer in front of him, he wasn't typing. His fingers had barely touched the keys, and she was certain he hadn't typed anything. From the way he was staring at it, it almost seemed as if he was focused on a single spot, rather than reading.

The funeral had been yesterday. She had gone with him, along with Gram.

There was something horrible about seeing her father cry, something that she couldn't quite identify. And she remembered thinking, as she clung to his arm, him leaning into her rather than the other way around as it always had been in the past... that she had never seen him do it before. A tear at a sad movie, a sniffle when he mentioned a dog he'd owned as a kid... but never all-out sobs.

Never the way he had broken down in that cemetery.

He had loved her. Honest-to-goodness loved her.

And Alexis knew that the part that was killing him now... was that he had never told her.

As the words crossed her mind, a movement caught her eye, and she jerked her head up to see that he had shifted on the couch.

And as she watched, his finger lifted, resolve coloring his features. She didn't have to look, to know what he was doing. From her angle, she couldn't see the screen, but she knew, as he punched a single key.

Silently, she pushed to her feet and padded down the stairs in her pajamas. He didn't look up as she came around and leaned over his shoulder, seating herself lightly on the edge of the cushion beside him.

His hands offered little resistance as she pulled them away from the keys, and gently hit the undo button, watching the blank white screen refill with several hundred pages of Nikki Heat's life.

He had been sitting with the entire document highlighted, lost in thought, she realized. And then he had hit backspace. He had brought it all back to the beginning, washed away the entirety of his latest book, of everything he had been working towards.

It wouldn't do any good, though. Backspace couldn't bring her back; a keyboard couldn't erase what had happened, and a story could not cut off his pain.

She reached her hands over to lay them where his larger ones usually rested, and then she typed a single line, below the edge of the last paragraph he had typed before the shooting.

_She's still here._

She glanced at him, wondering if he'd understand her meaning.

Kate Beckett was gone. But he still had her memory; he still had a way to make her alive, the way she would have wanted, if she could have expressed it. She had told her that, when they were out at lunch one time... that she was glad Castle had written the books. That he had become a part of her life.

He looked at her, and there was a semblance of a familiar sparkle in his eyes. His arm lifted to wrap around her shoulders and squeeze her into his side, and she smiled at him, a sad, soft smile.

It didn't make things better. But maybe... it could be a start, for all of them.

Instead of an ending.

**Feedback is adored, be it positive or constructive or some mixture of the two. I would just love to know what was thought of this, so I can start looking into plot ideas for actual, full-out stories in this fandom :)**


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